“Victims rarely just get over it-the effects are usually devastating”
Is that your anecdotal experience, or data that you have read? The only data we’ve seen in the thread (albeit unsourced) suggested that “getting over it” is not rare.
If sexual assault in college is anywhere near as common as the statistics we’ve seen on CC, then most of the survivors are highly functional and find ways of dealing with their trauma, because we have to be meeting them every day. We’re talking about millions upon millions of people. (OF COURSE, every person with every kind of reaction deserves full support and resources to heal however they heal.)
First of all, by stating that sexual assault victims “don’t just get over it,” I did not mean that they can never recover. What I meant was that this is something that most victims view as a major trauma, is something they have to process in stages, and usually requires a good bit of support to accomplish.
Secondly, did you also challenge the “unsourced” assertion that “just getting over it” is “not rare”? The literature is quite clear that victims of rape commonly suffer serious and devastating effects from their assaults. Does it mean that they cannot go on to function normally in their lives? No. Does it mean that there has never been a victim who was able to immediately and permanently put it behind them? No. But most victims don’t just “get over it” as if they had their purses snatched or came back to the study carrel to find their laptop stolen. Is “just getting over it” actually “not rare”? I guess that depends on the definition of “getting over it” and “rare.”
@hanna:
It depends on what you mean by ‘getting over it’, and I am not doing that as a word game. Some victims of sexual assault end up where that is a major factor in their lives and they never really get over it, some seemingly recover and go on to lead normal lives and will tell you the assault no longer bothers them…but if you looked at their life, you could see where they still were affected.Some people recovery quickly and are fine, some people are assaulted and end up in a sense forgetting that, and then later on, 10,20 years down the road, it comes back to them. Some seem normal, and end up either sexually dead or hyper sexual. It isn’t all that much different than PTSD among soldiers in some ways, while the common perception was that Vietnam vets all came back screwed up, a lot of those guys came home and were fine, but even among those guys there was often a toll they paid, it didn’t stop them from functioning, but it was there. My dad was a WWII vet of the third army and there were things 30 years+ afterword you could see, if we were in a restaurant and a bus boy made a racket with silverware or plates, my dad would get agitated, and there were other things that set him off I am pretty sure had roots back then.
I have personal experience with this and also have been around both people who were sexually abused/assaulted and their partners, and the reality is it is a continuum and not all the consequences are visible, the 30% who the other person cited as not getting over it were like the veterans who are really messed up and are visible, the other 70% likely have a sliding scale of issues rising from the assault…and though many of those things are hidden, they still affect the survivors lives and those around them.
My personal experience with someone close to me who was sexually assaulted 8 years ago is that they have gone on to achieve at a high level, look forward to life with optimism, and yet still struggle with PTSD to this day, even after much support and professional treatment. I suspect it will never “go away” completely.
Appearances can be deceiving. Many people can effectively hide their mental, physical, and/or emotional pain and still appear to be “high functioning.”
Anecdotal experience: I am a highly functional survivor most of the time. However, I still deal with depression and when Mr R and I first started dating, I had horrific flashbacks which left me as a crying, broken down mess. So yes, I may appear to you as though I’ve “gotten over it” but really, I haven’t.
There is a plethora of data out there that shows that most sexual assault victims don’t just “get over it.” There are many short-term and long-term effects that many not present themselves to casual acquaintances.
Ohmy! So the seriousness with which we should consider rape depends on the strength of the violated person’s ability to develop coping mechanisms to reclaim his/her life. The better able the violated person is at that, the less traumatic the rape must have been and thus, the less culpable the rapist.
Sigh* Some folks have such a long way to go . . . . .
That is the dumbest “conclusion” ever and you are jumping the shark. No one is excusing the rapist who just so happens to choose a highly resilient victim who is able to process and put it behind her. I don’t know what straw man you are fighting here, but this is truly bizarre.
I don’t see it as a straw man. It is the flip side of the coin that says, “why ruin his life with jail”. You can only say that if you also assume that it’s not such a big deal to the victim, that they “get over it” pretty quickly, etc. People can be quite functional and still be haunted years later.
I’m not sure one thing naturally leads to the other. I can imagine someone (not me) saying: her life is already unalterably impacted but why ruin two lives?
Exactly. That’s the logic (not that I agree with it, but that’s the logic). Not “it was no big deal to her, she got over it.” Sorry, that was a really odd leap of logic you were making (or assuming that others make).
No one “excuses” crimes or imposes lesser punishment based on the ability of the victim to get over it in any other context - why would you assume that was in play here? If you burn down my house, you get sentenced to X regardless of whether that was my only home or I have 5 other homes or I was thinking of selling it anyway.
I don’t think anyone was trying to minimize the traumatic impact of a sexual assault on a woman’s life - but just to point out that many eventually come to view themselves as survivors, not victims. What I responded to was the implication that being a victim of such an attack meant a woman would, in most cases, be unable to have a good life or move on. That doesn’t mean that she and those that love her won’t always be impacted and likely experience repercussions. However, I am not sure it is always helpful to victims of trauma to suggest they will remain devastated or to suggest to those that are able to fully move on that their assaults were less horrific or that they didn’t react properly. We have seen situations in the press and the courts in which a person does not react to a trauma according to accepted wisdom and that is used against them.
That also in NO WAY reduces the culpability of the rapist. The details of the crime itself and the evidence should dictate guilt and punishment, not how the victim reacts. There should always be the assumption for any violent crime, especially sexual assault, that the victim has been harmed both physically and emotionally.
The type of assault, the results of any criminal proceedings, the level of support for the victim, therapy, and her own belief system and psychological make-up, and possibly other factors, likely affect her reaction, the depth of grief and the length of time to reach some state of recovery. The impact will never go away completely, but recovery is possible. I would hope that research is also focusing on the best means to help victims recover and become survivors.
Why ruin a murderer’s life because he/she killed someone else?
It is hard to measure the impact of something happening to someone which is the main reason the laws exist to suggest some level of uniform punishment for a given verdict.
The main problem everyone here sees except for a few is that the judge arbitrarily assigned a slap on the wrist type punishment that does not befit the crime.
I was responding to posts claiming in very broad terms that everyone in Group X has Y reaction of Z length. This is untrue, and pointing out that it is untrue in no way minimizes the reality that many have severe and long-lasting reactions. We shouldn’t put everyone in one box.
If I point out that, say, 85% of people diagnosed with breast cancer survive 5 years or more, am I minimizing or insulting the people whose illness is fatal? Am I trivializing the treatment these survivors go through to get to that recovery rate? I don’t see that. I see resisting false fatalism.
I didn’t correct a post that correctly stated current research that I’ve read, no. Should I have? I didn’t have time to get a citation myself.
Whether we use “all” or “most” or “many” is important.
Hanna, when someone points out that x% of people “get over” being raped, some may well read it as an implicit criticism of those who have not been able to get over it yet. There is an undertone of “Be stoic! What’s wrong with you?” Not so with people who have been diagnosed with breast cancer (at least not so in most parts of the US these days)–there is no implicit criticism of those not in the 85%.
I accept that you did not intend that association at all. But it might be useful to know that it could be drawn.
It is good news for those x% that they do get over it, and that may be encouraging to someone who does not know yet what the future holds. Of course, there is no point in unnecessary fatalism.
On the other hand, if someone who has been raped is asserting, “I will never get over it,” that’s part of the mental health issue that needs to be addressed, and not a personal failing. Some recent evidence that PTSD in combat soldiers does not go away even after years is surely troubling to people who were violently assaulted.
It’s not just a question of developing resilience.
Can you illustrate the right way to respond to unjustified fatalism about recovery from this problem? What additional disclaimers besides the ones I used should a person include to add clarity about this?
I don’t see any posts where anyone said that x% get over this. I saw Hanna respond to a post stating that victims do NOT “got over” it and put the response in quotes to show she was echoing what was said above. She also put many caveats and support for victims in her response.
Responses to trauma are on a continuum and neither end of the spectrum is more valid than the other. Someone who can’t move on, does not want to be told they should just get over it. Conversely, someone who has been able to put this behind them using whatever tools they need to, may not want to be treated like a victim.
I think we are all on the same page: whatever the victim’s response here is her own business and we should be supporting survivors in what ever ways they need. Nobody else should be telling them how to feel or projecting their own feelings. And if a particular woman finds ways to cope, that should not lessen the punishment faced by her attacker.
“Hanna, when someone points out that x% of people “get over” being raped, some may well read it as an implicit criticism of those who have not been able to get over it yet. There is an undertone of “Be stoic! What’s wrong with you?””
That is PURE emotional projection on your part. No one said or even hinted such a thing. No one said people who were able to “get over” being raped more easily were better people than those who can’t or couldn’t. It was descriptive, not evaluative. It merely describes a truth - we are not all the same when it comes to how we handle or process traumas.